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THE “COACHING’S NEXT BIG THING” SERIES

I’m really pleased to post the following article from Maria Varallo on Speed Coaching. My hunch is that this is a form that is only going to grow in popularity as it meets important needs of time and value, notwithstanding the benefits of the form to “get to the point” very quickly. It’s a fascinating article and I hope you find it useful for your own coaching work. Over to Maria…

It’s true speed coaching did start off as a bit of fun however it has turned into a serous affair of learning and more learning and that’s just for me, the coach!

When our client asked us to deliver taster sessions for their Learning and Development week ‘of course’ we replied enthusiastically, we did not expect ‘taster’ to mean fifteen-minute lunchtime slots. It seemed everyone in the company wanted to give it a try, so the only way was to offer a speeded up meeting of minutes instead of hours.

I went in with a couple of ideas and even a template of how to use this precious time even though I know that a large part of coaching is working with unexpected, it really can be staying with the not knowing. However I thought this would be different as it turns out it wasn’t.

We felt we were manoeuvred into a position of thinking and acting much faster, using tools and techniques that intuitively flashed into the mind we acted upon, instead of holding back and checking the motivation, the commitment etc.

We started to get into the swing of it very quickly and the learning is as follows: –

1. Manage expectations and set the scene right at the beginning as soon as the client walks in.
2. Build rapport in a couple of minutes.
3. If you’re an experienced coach and getting supervision then go with your intuition. Intuition is layers of experience fast tracked. Best practice would be to talk through these thoughts, actions and reflect on your learning in supervision.
4. Remember wrap up is very important, just as important as the first couple of minutes. Invite feedback, gauge their interest and of course what’s their next step? Ensure they leave feeling curious and good preferably up – lifted and wanting to know more. I gave my card and invited them to get back to me with any queries or comments etc.

I loved it and more importantly the clients went away smiling and the evaluations showed they wanted more. We would do it again and the more I do it the more questions it raises for me, so please let me know if you try it.

MOST NLP’ERS WOULD CREATE AN OBSERVER POSITION…

…by asking the client to “Imagine themselves observing their actions from afar.”

There’s a million and one ways to do this, but I’ve found a slightly different approach that works just as well, I call it the OBSERVER2 POSITION – it achieves pretty much the same results in terms of objectivity for the client but without them having to do the “mental gymnastics” of leaping into a different position, and yes, I know you could move the client, but let’s say you are speaking on the phone – most of the time, this is my situation – and you want to facilitate this objective glimpse in a quick and natural manner…

All you do is say, “Ok. It’s often the case that others can see us more clearly than we can ourselves – basically because we are “in the game” so to speak. So, let’s do this to get another useful perspective on this. Imagine that someone is watching your actions from afar. They can see you actions, your thoughts and feelings. Yet they don’t know you at all, but they can see how you go about every minute of every day. Spooky eh? 🙂 Ok, now what would THEY SAY about how you are APPROACHING THIS?”

You could then move onto THOUGHTS, ACTIONS, FEELINGS…and anything else you want this IMAGINARY META FIGURE to comment on.

I CAN FEEL IT IN MY BONES

There’s a revolution in coaching to individuals. Not in business where they get it in a consulting kind of way, but the man and woman in the street, the drawing out of potential, the working with one or more on projects, the co-creation of radical on-the-ground shifts, where we no longer wait for it to be done for us, we go do, we learn to go do, we must go do.